Basically with Forge, You don't make a character. Imagine Call of Duty, With your sniper, assault, SMG setups.. Well you can switch "Class" every death. (Or at start of every game, Cannot remember exactly which one)

You'll be able to switch between the classes anyways, to get a feel of them all.
The player base is not yet that high, the game is still active but some hours of the day it can take a few minutes to find a game. Hopefully this will improve once the game is actually complete.

As for suggestions, I'd suggest Magika only if you have a group of friends to play with (Gets boring otherwise, imo) Forge is fun for a couple hours but nothing keeps me wanting to go back to the game.